Rauf Oyewole, Bauchi
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has moved to save over 556,000 unvaccinated children of Bauchi State from possible illness and supported the state with 2.5m doses of polio vaccines.
Chief of Bauchi Field Office of UNICEF, Dr Nuzhat Rafique who handed over 2.5m doses of polio vaccines to the State Government preparatory to the 2025 Polio vaccination campaign said that the state and Nigeria need to wipe out polio.
Rafique who spoke at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi on Thursday, the store location, stated that, Polio campaign would commence in 13 zero dose local councils on 24th while proceeding to the entire State on 26th to 29th of April.
"This is very critical, very important, it is a make or break event for us. These two campaigns this year are the last chance for Nigeria and for Bauchi to contribute towards the eradication of Polio in Nigeria.
"Bauchi is one of the zero dose states with 13 out of 20 LGAs with zero dose children. Zero dose children means that no vaccine has ever reached them and it comprises over 556,000 children who have never received any vaccination, so you can imagine how highly risky they are.
"So, we have mapped out these LGAs and we are starting there from the 24t. I requested you to give this massive report, let all communities in Bauchi State know that this is the month for the Polio campaign," she added.
She urged communities to cooperate and mobilise resources to proceed to vaccination centres to get their children vaccinated. "This is not only for them, but for the generations to come, for the whole future of Nigeria and the children born in Nigeria. If we are polio free, they will be much better citizens in sha Allah.
"Especially for this campaign, UNICEF is collaborating with the Primary Healthcare Development Board and Her Excellency, the First Lady, we always have this campaign in Bauchi State and we hope that this time around too, it will be successful in sha Allah.
"The primary healthcare board has taken delivery of the vaccine which we supported in bringing in a total of 2.5m doses of Polio vaccine already here in the cold room, then we have more than 50,000 of drops, we have 25,000 pen markers to be used for marking fingers of children vaccinated."
Nuzhat Rafique emphasised to journalists that, "It is your responsibility to take this message to the communities to bring out their children for the vaccination so that we know how many children were vaccinated."
She stressed that, "Every child U-5 is a target for the campaign but in those 556,000 children who are zero dose, we are hoping that after now, there will not be zero dose in Bauchi again."
According to her, "It is not only Polio for them, it is all the vaccine packages that need to reach them and once Polio reaches them and they start getting immunized, in sha Allah we will reduce the number of zero dose children."
Also speaking, UNICEF Health Officer, Patrick Akor, explained that there are 160,250 doses that will be used for the round of vaccination to reach children between ages 0 - 59 months.
He also assured that UNICEF has provided pen markers that would be used to finger mark the children already vaccinated for proper and adequate data collection.
“We are going to ensure that in all the local governments, all teams have adequate vaccines during the implementation exercise,” he assured.
Bappah Jika, a representative from the Bauchi state Primary Healthcare Development Board, who confirmed the receipt of the vaccines from UNICEF, appreciated the Fund for the ‘life saving’ support.
He assured that adequate publicity will be embarked upon to create awareness for the campaign so that the target will be achieved.
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